An Intelligent Pilot Contamination Attacker-Defender Model for Wireless Networks: A Stackelberg Game Based Approach

Existing studies on pilot contamination attack often assume that the attack and jamming strategies of adversaries are fixed. The enemy has not made any strategic corrections to the detection plan. In this paper, we analyze how an intelligent malicious user considers the role of legitimate user and adjusts attacking strategy during training phase in wireless communication to improve his eavesdropping performance. By defender-attacker interaction as a Stackelberg game, Bob as the leader chooses his pilot training power, while a full-duplex eavesdropper as the follower determines the pilot contamination power according to the observed Bob’s ongoing training signals transmission. Two equilibriums under different strategy spaces are analyzed. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can defend against an intelligent active eavesdropper with a higher secrecy rate and utility.